The 1950s was the definitive decade for all kinds of stories and tales relating to science fiction. The most numerous and familiar antagonist in this genre is undoubtedly some kind of alien, since what they look like is anyone's guess and it makes for an interesting (although worn out) plot when we are told the aliens want to take over the earth. This movie does not feature any aliens, but it does have arguably the second most common sci-fi enemy: robots. This is important because the one in question is one of the most recognizable and celebrated of all mechanical men (Robby the Robot). Despite improving pretty much any scene of any movie/show he appears in, the premise of this film is mediocre. It is centered around a kid named Tim Merrinoe who is in desperate need of someone to play with. His father also happens to be a highly skilled and intelligent man of science who has a supercomputer mainframe in his laboratory. Although initially nondescript to look at, this supercomputer is an integral piece of the story because after Tim's encounter with it, he suddenly has enough smarts to rebuild a robot his father was ready to throw away. After putting the robot (Robby) back together, nobody seems impressed. However, an incident soon follows that involves Tim taking a ride in a kite that Robby made. This catches his mother's attention and she demands Robby to cease the flight at once. What she doesn't know is that Robby has been reprogrammed to never put any human in a life-ending situation. Because of this incident, Tim no longer wants his parents to yell at him when he's playing and so wishes Robby to turn him transparent. Once this is accomplished, everything appears all nice and calm, but afterwards we learn how the supercomputer is actually malevolent and wants to control the world via a satellite. Tim is shut away in a rocket, and meanwhile, the military tries to shoot Robby with flamethrowers, mortar shells, artillery, rifles, machine guns, and everything else they have, but they do absolutely nothing. The army was wrong to shoot at him anyway since his only goal now is to save Tim. In so doing, he disobeys the orders given to him by the supercomputer, which state he was supposed to kill him. After landing back on earth in the ship, Tim tries to deactivate the supercomputer, which says it is beyond his pathetic attempt at technology and is invulnerable. Just when all hope seems lost, Robby appears and smashes through a wall to destroy its power source. After this, we see Robby has been adopted by Tim's family. This movie isn't that great. It's nice to see more 50s science fiction movies (especially ones with Robby in them) but after a while, it feels like the same thing over and over. Eventually, you run out of unique stories to write and it makes more sense to put down the pen. The acting here isn't particularly good, and even if it was, Robby is clearly the main attraction and he's not even a human being. Artificial intelligence wanting to take over the earth is not anything new, but since this was the 50s, I have to give them some credit for making the main villain a computer instead of aliens, the much more overused bad guys at the time. Other than that, there's not much to say. I first learned about this movie from an anniversary edition of the film Forbidden Planet, which I own. The second disc is a bonus and its sole content is this movie. The quality itself is not that good, and even on Forbidden Planet's blu ray edition, The Invisible Boy still has its default definition. Disappointing I know, but not too much of a loss considering this movie is pretty generic by sci-fi standards.
Review of The Invisible Boy
